Has the Public Health Field paid too much attention to AIDS.

An interesting ‘Perspective’ has been published in the BMJ this week by Roger England asking the public health field to consider whether it took the wrong approach to AIDS. The ‘Think’ piece notes that AIDS is not more important than malaria, pneumonia, diabetes or heart disease in developing countries. It also notes that if it were not for the diatribes of the Gay Communities AIDS would have been treated like other sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis or gonorrhea and that faster progress might have been made. Further the public health community should not have shelved action against other major killing diseases in favor of AIDS. Maybe now is the time to place AIDS into perspective and treat it both as a chronic disease, like TB, and as an acute infectious disease like syphilis.